Karl Hughes runs Draft.dev, a content agency that writes for developer-tool companies, and The Podcast Consultant, a podcast production business he bought. He was the first engineer at three startups, started Draft.dev in the first months of COVID, and now buys small service businesses on the side.

We talk about why he tracks every hour of his own time, his rule of only doing the things only Karl can do, taking a full month off from the business in year two, what a service agency actually sells for, why his ships are always on fire and which fires he lets burn, product-market-founder fit, whether you can build a dev-tool business without living in San Francisco, what AI did to the price of a blog post, and why consistency over 30 years beats three hard years.

Guest: Karl Hughes, draft.dev

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

00:14 Intro

00:20 Who Karl is and what Draft.dev does

02:20 Origin story: first engineer at three startups

03:30 2020: the startup falls apart and Draft.dev takes off

04:50 When he knew it had legs: half his time on new business

06:37 Why he tracks every hour of his own time

07:07 From writing software to writing about it

08:11 Skill stacking: decent at three things beats best at one

08:59 Running two companies on 20 hours of real work

11:19 The month-off test: a business that runs without you

12:44 "If I'm not in my business, what's my leverage?"

14:26 Product doesn't matter, market penetration does

15:33 Entrepreneurship through acquisition

17:37 What a service business actually sells for

19:34 The ships are always on fire: which problems he ignores

21:32 Buying a company that's on fire

24:03 Entering a niche you know nothing about

26:47 Do you have to be in San Francisco?

28:58 Product-market-founder fit

30:19 His unfair advantage

33:32 GEO and AEO: nobody has the answer

37:25 Selling something you've never done before

41:53 Why dev tools is a hard industry to serve

43:48 What AI did to the price of content

45:37 If content is infinite, what is it worth?

47:04 AI adoption is further behind than you think

50:06 Opinion and personality as the last leverage

52:39 Buying back your time and the levels of entrepreneurship

54:05 Mindset, cutting out cynics, finding a bigger room

56:59 Manifestation: belief, action, results

59:48 When to pivot: time-box the decision

1:02:05 "I'd have a million-dollar business in a year"

1:03:07 The 30-second message: consistency over 30 years

1:04:30 Wrap-up

1:05:02 Outro